Photographer of Families, Small People and Delightful Places, Travel and Lifestyle Writer and Blogger, Lives in Newcastle, Loves the North, Often Accompanied By A Beagle Named Holly Bobbins

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Have You Visited Lane 7 yet?

Lane 7 in Newcastle is a boutique bowling alley, it's got pub games, pool, ping pong and now a racing rig, it's for families during the day and then at 7 children are expected to be off the premises meaning it's a grown up playground, an ideal night out with friends and upon conferring with my friends who came along for the launch of the racing rig we also agreed it would be the ideal first date, there's also a restaurant and bar meaning you can have a whole night out in one place and if you're me that's a very good thing. It's also somewhere you don't have to wear big heels to, it's casual, it's grown up and the loo's are a testament to what you can do with chipboard (yes, really).

I went along to the launch of the new car racing rig (note to self, not go karts, you can't actually fit in them) after a kind invitation from fellow blogger Samantha which also extended to my lovely friend Harriet, it was a Tuesday night andLane 7 was packed to the brim with wannabe racers including famous face Scarlett from Gogglebox.

First though to ready our tummies for the race ahead it was time to sample to delights of the Lane 7 menu. Lane 7 has a compact menu full of things they just cook really well, burgers, hot dogs, meaty sandwiches, a carnivorous delight although they do also offer veggie things too.

For desserts there was a choice of cheesecake which I had an ice-cream with a plethora of toppings, obviously way too tempting to wait for a spoon in the case of Katie Jane.

It was not long before several happy tummies climbed the stairs to the brand new racing rig, the rig has 10 seats, all of course full size racing seats with individual adjustable steering wheels, at first glance it looks devilishly hard, I can tell you that it is ridiculously hard if you're me, my best time was 85.99 seconds for one lap and that was mostly going backwards around the track.

A bevy of bloggers wait in the wings for their turn to race.

As we waited for the Go, the adrenalin was evident, I felt like Jensen Button at the start of the Monaco Grand Prix, my palms were sweaty, my heart was pumping, maybe I wouldn't be so bad as I'd imagined, for just a moment I thought all those years playing on my Sega game gear in days of yore might mean that I was secretly good at this kind of thing but just didn't know it and then a kindly assistant advised me that he would move my car back to the start when we come to the end of the race, yes I was so bad that someone had to come and move my car back to the start. I literally couldn't move for most of the race but in my defence I don't drive and never will, there's a reason for that! I'm fairly sure if I actually tried to drive I would end up in much the same position, backed into a wall trying to go around the streets backwards!

I'll definitely be going back to lane 7, it's the perfect place to take your teenagers and I imagine they'll be way better at racing than I'm ever likely to be, thankfully I'm not quite so bad at bowling so I might just give that a go next time.